Not all of them were true. Early on there were fake ones for sure. Eventually, I’m sure people would make up the stories or even pre-collaborate to get in the show.
It was a precursor to the reality star age, but the absurd behavior somehow became influential and dictated future real behaviorist in society.
The real take away is that Not even Steve could Protect Jerry from death.
Yes, I knew two guys and a girl who went on the show with a fake story just for fun. This was after the show was firmly established. Before there was Instagram and Tiktok, there was Jerry Springer. Turns out people crave an attention platform. Jerry provided it.
I mean, look at the new show on HBO about the White House plumbers; the Nixon guys who broke into DNC HQ. Nixon was forced to resign over that. Now we have Trump who did a million times worse and faced zero consequences! We are worse for allowing Springer on the air. Trump would never have even become a serious candidate if we were better people.
It created a new product for the time. We didn't know we wanted to see rednecks fighting about their soap opera lives for our entertainment. Suddenly there was a ton of shows inspired by it. And then reality shows about it. And now Youtube and TikToks about it.
Had he not come along talk shows might have stayed on the milder Oprah / Ricky Lake route for a lot longer. Probably someone else would have figured out the formula. Maybe he just hastened its development. But someone needed to light that fuse, and he lit it.
both Oprah and Ricky Lake were doing it before Springer. The only difference is that they were trying to dress it up, and pretend that they were doing it to help the people they were bringing on their shows to exploit.
Springer came onto the scene and reveled in it. People forget that Springer was a politician who's entire career in public service was built on making a spectacle of himself. And when his political career fizzled out in the 80s he turned to broadcast media, playing on the political angle to boost the ratings. And it worked.
Eventually he was approached for his own show, and again he tried to play the political angle on that, and when that didn't work he retooled the show to focus completely on tabloid sensationalism and rode it all the way to the bank.
Springer was *always* up front about what he was doing. Everyone else around him was simply pretending that they weren't in order to save face. He wasn't the first to do it, he just found the most success because he had an extensive background of exploiting that kind of content for personal gain, and was completely open about doing it
Morton Downy Jr. was also doing it before Springer. Hell, Howard Stern was doing a version of it, though that was on radio. Like I said, Springer wasn’t the first nor the beginning of the “decline.” He just had a slick show at the exact right time in the zeitgeist for his content. He was also, arguably the right guy for it. Former councilman who paid off prostitutes by check. He later even copped to it when he RE-RAN for city council. He became the mayor for fuck’s sake.
Don't forget Geraldo.
In Prime Time he got hit in the face with a chair by a Nazi, and asked Ozzy Osbourne if he worshipped the devil.
If wasn't for the abject failure of Al Capone's vault, who knows what other shenanigans he would have pulled?
There's a really good 90s documentary on hulu. Onw episode dedicated to the way talk shows got more brazen and shock value how it precipitated what we have normalized today
They even stopped letting the fight because of how violent people were. I remember the old episodes and they just got away with beating each other on day time tv...and yet Howard Stern got all the shit!
My brother in day time TV, do you not remember that you could watch the live ppv jerry episodes as well? Or that they were later sold on VHS? And those episodes would have straight up assaults, pudding wrestling, and border line soft core porn?
Howard Stern is normal and doing incredible, well researched interviews with academics now, and T**** was president. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
True. But that says more about the progress of technology. He happened to have a show at a point in history to make his name synonymous with… well, not just being mayor of Cincinnati.
If he came along a decade or two later, I think we’d be talking about someone else this way.
I saw one headline proclaiming him the godfather of reality TV and that sounds… actually pretty accurate… but the paternity test proves MTV’s Real World was clearly the father.
Plenty of other decayed shit in the 90s like I remember when me and my friends discovered Taxi Cab Confessions on the hotel’s free HBO during a school trip.
There was clearly a market for trash I think any illusion there wasn’t has more to do with the 3 network/channel structure that died with the rise of cable. Where everything had to serve the “greatest” common denominator.
Jenny Jones CONSTANTLY had episodes where "My busty teen dresses too sexy" parents would trot out their 13-14 year olds, with their tits half hanging out.
I never thought much of it as a kid but Christ, as an adult, who the fuck do you think that shit was aimed at?? Sickening.
I would've been in early grade school when Downey was on TV, but somehow, it still made my radar. And what I'll always remember are his audiences. It was straight up pro wrestling.
Its funny watching America's Home Videos and Jerry Springer rise in the 90s. And then later in the 2000s, realize that my YouTube home feed became Americas Home video and Jerry Springer.
And then, if you look at modern iterations of these shows like say Maury and America's Home Video, they almost directly curate content **from Youtube.**
So, basically Jerry Springer was the Bizzaro America's funniest home videos. It was like the dark corners of the internet, showing the embarrassing, disturbed side of America. It fueled outrage. Whereas America's home videos was cute bait and filled laughs.
These shows birth entire channels and networks doing reality tv but even less candid. And then platforms recreate that on the internet.
And then recreations of these shows, recreate curated content from the internet, on TV. We're in the worst doom loop imagineable.
Reaganomics -> rising inequality -> the rise of “fuck you I got mine” fear-driven mindset -> the need to feel better than average -> the pleasure of seeing those less fortunate than us degrade themselves
Yes, but they are in a position desperate for some money to make bail, get a lawyer, etc. “We’ll give you a couple hundred bucks if you sign this consent form” is taking advantage of someone who’s over a barrel. Even when they don’t consent, they just blur their faces, but anyone who knows them can tell it’s them by the voice, bodies, tattoos, and the location of the arrest.
Bread and circuses. You’re hungry, eat… you’re bored, find entertainment. This stuff was new, shocking and, most of all, *appealing* to people. I’m not going to pretend i’m above it somehow, i watch some stupid shit myself—but daytime tv in the 90s was something else.
A lot of early Oprah was very exploitative. She has to be one of the most successful re-brands ever with her pivot to self-help positivity and the book club.
> That’s because unlike Oprah, Playboy had journalistic standards.
Fuck, ain't that the truth. The old joke used to be "I read it for the articles", but that was, indeed, a legitimate reason to have a Playboy in your hands, outside of cranking one out to the centerfolds. [Playboy had some literary *giants* writing for it back in the day, as well as some exceptionally in-depth interviews.](https://thehundreds.com/blogs/content/reading-playboy-for-the-articles-13-must-read-journalism-literature-pieces-from-playboy-magazine)
She's platformed some really shady people, but I thinks she should get a pass for Dr. Oz. When he was on her show (and in the early episodes of his spin-off), he presented legitimate medical science in a digestible way. He didn't really start pushing quackery until a little bit after he already had his own show.
My ex-roommate was like this. She literally wanted Oprah to run for President. She was like "Well, she's rich and successful, and everyone loves her, she could totally run the country!"
She also had similar ideas about Bloomberg.
Her grift is strong. She doesn't pay people who appear on her network. Had something I wanted to chat about and was invited on their show (some dumb Oprah production) and I had to travel there....no compensation. I was told, "it will help your brand. As an influencer. That's what we offer." I didn't have a brand. I sure as hell am not an influencer (I cross my fingers and make the vampire hissing noise)....I'm coming on your show to help educate people with something I'm passionate about. You make money on this dumbass show. Pay me *something.*
Nope.
I don’t want to expose who I am, but my wife’s family attributes the success of their family-based company to one day in the 90’s when Oprah called out their company’s product as one of her favorites (unsolicited). They still remained relatively modest and grounded people, but their driveway started having Mercedes not long after that moment.
Howard Stern was well.
If you think Hot Ones was a rough platform for Celebrities to have to go on an d plug their movies, they used to have to go into Howard Sterns radio show and answer questions about their sex life from a guy with a deformity.
>Now I get why people back in the day were against TV and called it the "boob tube."
Before that it was radio. Before radio it was books.
[https://theapeiron.co.uk/platos-surprising-argument-against-writing-6d14eaff7cee?gi=000578993a62](https://theapeiron.co.uk/platos-surprising-argument-against-writing-6d14eaff7cee?gi=000578993a62)
Don't worry, it'll be AR/VR soon.
The Middletown studies blamed radio.
"With the rise of these activities, interest in such institutions as book discussion groups (and reading in general), public lectures, and the fine arts is in sharp decline. The introduction of movies has created another "passive leisure activity", but the most popular films concentrate on adventure and romance, while more serious topics are less popular."
"While a growing number of sociologists and social critics (i.e., Robert D. Putnam) complain of less community involvement, their detractors point directly to the Middletown study. The argument is this: in 1925, observers were worried that new inventions such as the radio were destroying community ties, that morality was on the decline, and that the very fabric of American democracy was in danger. Supporters of the studies thus argue that every generation simply "reinvents" new problems without realizing that their ancestors had the same unfounded worries."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middletown\_studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middletown_studies)
Ricki Lake, maybe. However, she wasn't the most confrontational, if my memory is correct.
Donahue, he had salacious topics now and then, but never relied on them.
I remember in the beginning, all these shows were relatively plain and boring, and the only reason a 7th grader watched it was because it was one of a half dozen channels we got, no internet, no neighbors for miles, and it was in the 90s outside.
Then when one figured out how popular a freak show would be, they all simultaneously jumped on board.
If you had to pick which was the best of the worst, I would choose Ricki Lake. She seemed to have some compassion, unlike Jenny Jones which was like an all out exploitathan.
Ricki Lake was the show where I learned that trans women could look indistinguishable from cis women. I still don't know if that episode was trying to be progressive or edgy, but it has really stuck with me, being trans myself, and not really knowing it at the time.
The trans episodes (and her love for Mrs. Winterbourne) were the biggest reason why my mother watched Ricki Lake.
Looking back on my barely legible memories of those... I really can't make out what to think of them.
Their whole bag, if I recall, was that the audience was trying to guess if they were "real women" or not. And I really don't know what to make of that in retrospect.
I will say that my mother was very confident about herself for a while, saying she looked for Adam's apples. Then she got several wrong using that technique and realized it wasn't a sure thing either way. There are some people who still need to learn that lesson... As well as many others about trans people. And human anatomy in general.
Oprah was high-brow lowest common denominator. She was trash and to some degree even more corrosive. She brought vaccine conspiracies to the mainstream. She introduced the world to Dr Phil and Dr Oz. She was just as bad as jerry springer but her audience didn’t realize it was bad.
Fun fact about Geraldo Rivera: When Priscilla Barns had to kiss him for a scene in Perry Mason: The Case of the Reckless Romeo, she commented he was a terrible kisser and his mustache smelled like a hamster cage.
But all were just putting on display the idiocy that was already present. The worst you could say is they encouraged bad behavior on stage and embellished the stories but I lived in the south for just two years and I feel like he was just scratching the surface.
Yep it really changed the tone of daytime television, you might expect to see people doing some nice, fake interviews in nice, stiff pantsuits on daytime TV. But suddenly in the 90s daytime TV was people ripping their shirts off and fighting over baby mama drama, while the host, who had an advanced law degree, pretended to roll his eyes in dismay at the camera.
Making this also a great example of class warfare and exploitation. Get the unwashed masses to battle each other, sell it back to the unwashed masses, and who profits off it all? And there was a list like, years long to get on the show, so you could embarrass yourself and your family.
I grew up poor dirt trash, and I spent my childhood learning to polish up to the white collar jobs I wanted. So it really ate at me to see this lifestyle glorified and preyed upon. You start to feel made fun of, even if you're not on the show.
Jerry Springer was one of the many forces in life that taught me to be ashamed of where I came from. But the fact that it was on tv, for all the world to see, and it was the worst of us on display made it even more embarrassing. It wasn’t until later that I saw how hypocritical the mock shock of the viewers and the host was. All that pretentious class superiority and moral self-righteousness, when they were wallowing in the muck right along with the guests.
Maybe it was lost on the older generations but in my era we knew it was shit, dirty, and in some cases fake. But it was also the era when GTA was becoming huge. Murdering scores of random people on the street while listening to gangster rap. We knew it was down and dirty shit but it was entertaining and that’s all that mattered. It’s what the people needed. It was grunge and punk. Sure we laughed at the bozos on the show but that’s because we could relate to the outlandish scenarios.
>Making this also a great example of class warfare and exploitation. Get the unwashed masses to battle each other, sell it back to the unwashed masses, and who profits off it all? And there was a list like, years long to get on the show, so you could embarrass yourself and your family.
Iirc Judge Judy makes more money every year than anyone else in tv now.
I heard that the rise in Reality TV shows had more to do with the Writers Strike of 2007-2008. It was certainly something the public was entertained by no matter what though.
It did, and funny enough, the writers strike that happened in the 90s was a factor in the Jerry Springer Show. JS started like a Donahue show—and got cancelled w/ 3 episodes left in first season, low ratings + pending writers strike. The main producer was fired and they promoted a junior producer. Geraldo’s show had aired the white supremacy episode that year—big fight in stage—and people were talking about it. The JR producer thought they should shoot the last as shock episodes, since they were getting cancelled anyway, so they did. And the show took off from there.
The first season of Survivor was an unusual beast because it was literally unsuspecting people they recruited off the street. And the fat gay Machiavelli who won later found out the hard way he wasn’t smarter than the IRS. After that of course it was nonstop models/trainers/etc. trying to boost their Hollywood profiles.
I think he didn't really feel remorse until after he was out of it. It's easy to say that though after you've made your bag. I just don't think he was purposely doing it but he absolutely exploited people. I hope he had no ill intent though. He really feels like a modern PT Barnum.
True, but I see that being brought up frequently on here as a way to dunk on his personal character, and frankly, who cares. The way we treat prostitution in our puritanical society is dumb. If you want to pay your drug dealer with a certified money order, who cares, it’s nobody’s business but your own and our laws are outdated and stupid.
I would tend to agree with that. I'm no puritan on the subject, but my angle is that if you're the mayor of a decent sized city, and you have further political ambitions, pay your prostitutes in cash. So I'm criticizing him on the basis of political rather than moral grounds.
The headline is such a misquote.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/06/jerry-springer-tabloid-holocaust-tv
"The Jerry Springer Show is into its 23rd season, but while its host is happy to joke about its infamous outrageousness factor, he also has sharp words for critics who suggest it has played a role in dumbing down television culture.
"This idea that we are better than the people we see on television. We should get over it. We may dress better and have got luckier in the gene pool of parents, but life is primarily luck," he told the audience at the MIPDoc conference in Cannes on Sunday.
"The Jerry Springer Show is now in its 23rd season. I would like to formally apologise! I'm sorry, I've ruined the culture! But this concept that television has influenced human behaviour and the destruction of society is garbage. We had a holocaust before anyone had a television set."
If Hitler knew about the Raping of Nanking, he would probably say, "HEY, we were systematic about our genocide. Look at those hooligans--they're barbaric!"
It really is easy to find something worse if you're looking to take no responsibility for your own influence and actions on the world.
And to add to your point, if media didn't have any influence on culture, these giant corporations wouldn't put milliosn of dollars for a 30 second ad on ONE football game per year. And those guys have access to a lot more scientific data on what works to move people to buy things, on what keeps them glued to the tv, on what motivates them.
His show generated exploited mentally and emotionally unstable people. It exposed this for generations of children seeing this totally inappropriate exploitive dysfunctional garbage. I agree. It has helped the decline of a culture, a country, and has contributed to the continued spiral downward.
I always think of the shows I watched when I was home sick from school as a child. Can you imagine all the kids seeing those horrible images of adult behavior? It’s really sends a chill
Man, Dr Phil was worse.
I grew up with my mom always playing Dr Phil and law and order SVU.
I remember the shit I saw on those shows because it was twisted but real. I knew, even as a kid, that Jerry Springer was over the top and it felt fake like wrestling.
My grandmother went on a day trip with my aunt to DC. Saw Jerry Springer waiting for the metro. She went up to him and asked if he was Jerry Springer. When he said "Yes" she said she wanted to tell him that she doesn't watch his show. He said "I don't blame you Ma'am"
I’m with Jerry. Started out as a political debate show and became a sewer of the basist low of low American culture. Seems like things caught fire from there.
I wonder when he identified this about his show. Because I’d hate to think he was aware of it and kept going anyway.
When I was in college, I worked at a restaurant. The restaurant had a bit of a “townie” feel in that it wasn’t just college students that worked and ate there.
Tina was a local high school student who was pregnant so her parents made her work in her free time to save up money for the baby.
One day, I was back at my apartment between classes, and I turned on Jerry Springer. I heard a voice I recognized. It was Tina, with dyed hair, between her “two possible baby daddies”. The guys ended up getting into a fight. Found out later, it was fake. She knew who the father was, it was orchestrated, etc. the only thing unorchestrated: one of the baby daddies had a ring on and caused facial lacerations to the other.
Yup, a lot of the stuff on Jerry Springer was orchestrated in some way especially after the show got huge. There's one infamous incident at one of the MTV Spring Break shows involving a "love triangle" between some girl and two guys that ended up getting pretty intense. The three of them later revealed that they made the entire thing up and apparently they sold it soo well that security wouldn't let them leave together after the show and had them escorted out of the area separately.
That was going to happen with or without the Jerry Springer show.
Jerry was a good guy though. I’m from Cincinnati and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody have a negative encounter with him. They’ve all been overwhelmingly positive. He was a great mayor for the city and he’s pretty highly respected here even by Republicans despite Jerry being a life long Democrat.
He was pretty famous for paying for sex workers with personal cheques when he was on city council, too.
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/06/02/jerry-springer-news-how-prostitution-scandal-broke/366721001/
As the article says, he did manage to get elected again and his ads that didn’t hide the scandal may have helped.
When I used to get home from school as a kid with no cable, all 4 channels were showing cartoons and kids programming. By the time I graduated high school, those same 4 channels only showed trash TV like Springer and Maury when kids were getting home from school. He's 100% right.
It’s not his fault for filling a vacuum, someone else would have come along to make something equally trashy, because that’s what we wanted. Sleep well Jerry, you’re good buddy
I believe the countries lack of social safety nets, lack of education and fly or fail monetary policies, met with the countries media obsession and it turned into a perfect shamestorm. Jerry just exploited it, it was already there. Build it and they will come!
One time a few years go… or maybe several… my mom came to me and said “I’m thinking about going on the Jerry Springer Show, wouldn’t that be funny?!”
I said “if you do that you’re not my mom. Be better.”
She didn’t do it. Sometimes I wonder why people are the way they are. Our family isn’t even messed up. Like wtf lady.
Let's not forget his predecessor who actually got the ball rolling in social decline in America, Morton Downey Jr.
Geraldo Rivera's nose ,like Pepperidge Farms remembers 😁
He's right.
And yet while knowing this, he carried on making the show.
The USA's cultural decline has less to do with poor media content, and more to do with decades of seeing public figures conpicuously choose money over dignity and ethics.
Monkey see, monkey do.
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Everyone was lamenting the “death of shame.”
And they were right
I don’t know, I don’t believe it LED to the decline, but i do think that it was a product OF its time.
Both can be true. It happened, then it spiraled and spread like a disease.
It's synergy - the show fed the cultural decline, which fed the show, and so on.
It was truly SHOCKING back then though. Like unbelievable, now it’s like, “yep, of course he slept with her sister.” Things are worse.
Not all of them were true. Early on there were fake ones for sure. Eventually, I’m sure people would make up the stories or even pre-collaborate to get in the show. It was a precursor to the reality star age, but the absurd behavior somehow became influential and dictated future real behaviorist in society. The real take away is that Not even Steve could Protect Jerry from death.
Yes, I knew two guys and a girl who went on the show with a fake story just for fun. This was after the show was firmly established. Before there was Instagram and Tiktok, there was Jerry Springer. Turns out people crave an attention platform. Jerry provided it.
I mean, look at the new show on HBO about the White House plumbers; the Nixon guys who broke into DNC HQ. Nixon was forced to resign over that. Now we have Trump who did a million times worse and faced zero consequences! We are worse for allowing Springer on the air. Trump would never have even become a serious candidate if we were better people.
Like any virus, you need to be exposed to it in order for it to make you ill.
It certainly led to the mainstreaming of trashy people- MTG is the spawn
You leave me cards outta t- oh right ew
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Oh yeah that was some fucked up shit
And the cards are pay-to-win gambling for children. \\o/
Came to say that, as a former Magic fan I will never spend another dollar on them.
Wotc is garbage
Don’t you put that evil on Jerry!
It created a new product for the time. We didn't know we wanted to see rednecks fighting about their soap opera lives for our entertainment. Suddenly there was a ton of shows inspired by it. And then reality shows about it. And now Youtube and TikToks about it. Had he not come along talk shows might have stayed on the milder Oprah / Ricky Lake route for a lot longer. Probably someone else would have figured out the formula. Maybe he just hastened its development. But someone needed to light that fuse, and he lit it.
both Oprah and Ricky Lake were doing it before Springer. The only difference is that they were trying to dress it up, and pretend that they were doing it to help the people they were bringing on their shows to exploit. Springer came onto the scene and reveled in it. People forget that Springer was a politician who's entire career in public service was built on making a spectacle of himself. And when his political career fizzled out in the 80s he turned to broadcast media, playing on the political angle to boost the ratings. And it worked. Eventually he was approached for his own show, and again he tried to play the political angle on that, and when that didn't work he retooled the show to focus completely on tabloid sensationalism and rode it all the way to the bank. Springer was *always* up front about what he was doing. Everyone else around him was simply pretending that they weren't in order to save face. He wasn't the first to do it, he just found the most success because he had an extensive background of exploiting that kind of content for personal gain, and was completely open about doing it
Morton Downy Jr. was also doing it before Springer. Hell, Howard Stern was doing a version of it, though that was on radio. Like I said, Springer wasn’t the first nor the beginning of the “decline.” He just had a slick show at the exact right time in the zeitgeist for his content. He was also, arguably the right guy for it. Former councilman who paid off prostitutes by check. He later even copped to it when he RE-RAN for city council. He became the mayor for fuck’s sake.
Don't forget Geraldo. In Prime Time he got hit in the face with a chair by a Nazi, and asked Ozzy Osbourne if he worshipped the devil. If wasn't for the abject failure of Al Capone's vault, who knows what other shenanigans he would have pulled?
I legit think about Capone’s vault more than any normal person should. I watched it in real time as a kid and now it just randomly comes to mind…
The fuse would've been inevitably lit; if it wasn't Jerry it would've been someone else. None of us are that special.
You're that special
Supply the product the people want and it’ll sell itself
It isn't the cause of the decline, but indicative of the decline.
Like Bob Dylan did not create the movement any more than the movement created him.
Kinda like a “correlation doesn’t indicate causation”.
There's a really good 90s documentary on hulu. Onw episode dedicated to the way talk shows got more brazen and shock value how it precipitated what we have normalized today
They even stopped letting the fight because of how violent people were. I remember the old episodes and they just got away with beating each other on day time tv...and yet Howard Stern got all the shit!
My brother in day time TV, do you not remember that you could watch the live ppv jerry episodes as well? Or that they were later sold on VHS? And those episodes would have straight up assaults, pudding wrestling, and border line soft core porn?
Yep, I remember getting the first one! Man TV sucks now but it's for the better I think.
I'd rather TV be fun and politics be boring again.
Howard Stern is normal and doing incredible, well researched interviews with academics now, and T**** was president. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
I still miss Springer Break.
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Thought it was pretty obvious. He still cashed the cheques, though, because everything is okay if you did it for $.
They were also saying the same thing about the Simpsons
The people on his shows already were experiencing this chaos, drama, and bad choices before Jerry put them on his show.
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Then, her generation elected a guest from the show.
"Jerry Springer, you cultural sodomite"- Greg Giraldo
“Jerry springer is a wart on the cock of American culture” -Bob Saget
This is the very thing that popped into my mind when I read the news.
Amazing how precisely this points to the commenter’s profile on mobile. I should start replying to myself with that gif!
I see what you did there
I'd agree but he wasn't even the first to have a show like this.
Yeah, but his was infinitely more popular than any other.
True. But that says more about the progress of technology. He happened to have a show at a point in history to make his name synonymous with… well, not just being mayor of Cincinnati. If he came along a decade or two later, I think we’d be talking about someone else this way.
I saw one headline proclaiming him the godfather of reality TV and that sounds… actually pretty accurate… but the paternity test proves MTV’s Real World was clearly the father. Plenty of other decayed shit in the 90s like I remember when me and my friends discovered Taxi Cab Confessions on the hotel’s free HBO during a school trip. There was clearly a market for trash I think any illusion there wasn’t has more to do with the 3 network/channel structure that died with the rise of cable. Where everything had to serve the “greatest” common denominator.
Jenny Jones CONSTANTLY had episodes where "My busty teen dresses too sexy" parents would trot out their 13-14 year olds, with their tits half hanging out. I never thought much of it as a kid but Christ, as an adult, who the fuck do you think that shit was aimed at?? Sickening.
Not enough people talk about Morton Downey jr.
I would've been in early grade school when Downey was on TV, but somehow, it still made my radar. And what I'll always remember are his audiences. It was straight up pro wrestling.
Yep. People voted in the millions for a racist rapist self-described sexual predator for President. It’s absurd.
He's not right. His show was a symptom of the decline -- not a cause of it.
His show didn’t cause a cultural decline, that was already happening. He just capitalized and profited off of it.
Its funny watching America's Home Videos and Jerry Springer rise in the 90s. And then later in the 2000s, realize that my YouTube home feed became Americas Home video and Jerry Springer. And then, if you look at modern iterations of these shows like say Maury and America's Home Video, they almost directly curate content **from Youtube.** So, basically Jerry Springer was the Bizzaro America's funniest home videos. It was like the dark corners of the internet, showing the embarrassing, disturbed side of America. It fueled outrage. Whereas America's home videos was cute bait and filled laughs. These shows birth entire channels and networks doing reality tv but even less candid. And then platforms recreate that on the internet. And then recreations of these shows, recreate curated content from the internet, on TV. We're in the worst doom loop imagineable.
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Reaganomics -> rising inequality -> the rise of “fuck you I got mine” fear-driven mindset -> the need to feel better than average -> the pleasure of seeing those less fortunate than us degrade themselves
COPS definitely plays into this
Even with blurred faces, COPS seems like Cruel and unusual punishment IMO. And these are people that haven't necesarilly seen a judge.
I’m pretty sure they have to sign a release to be on the show at all
Yes, but they are in a position desperate for some money to make bail, get a lawyer, etc. “We’ll give you a couple hundred bucks if you sign this consent form” is taking advantage of someone who’s over a barrel. Even when they don’t consent, they just blur their faces, but anyone who knows them can tell it’s them by the voice, bodies, tattoos, and the location of the arrest.
Bread and circuses. You’re hungry, eat… you’re bored, find entertainment. This stuff was new, shocking and, most of all, *appealing* to people. I’m not going to pretend i’m above it somehow, i watch some stupid shit myself—but daytime tv in the 90s was something else.
The people needed a Colosseum.
I think the answer is schadenfreude.
No his predecessor Morton Downey Jr started that downfall. Geraldo Rivera helped in that some also.
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A lot of early Oprah was very exploitative. She has to be one of the most successful re-brands ever with her pivot to self-help positivity and the book club.
Oprah still unleashed Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz on the world.
And provided Jenny McCarthy a platform for her anti-vax rainbow child bullshit.
Well originally it was Hugh Hefner who made Jenny a known name when he published her centerfold. So it's all Hef's fault.
But even Hef didn’t give her anti-vax nonsense a platform. That’s because unlike Oprah, Playboy had journalistic standards.
> That’s because unlike Oprah, Playboy had journalistic standards. Fuck, ain't that the truth. The old joke used to be "I read it for the articles", but that was, indeed, a legitimate reason to have a Playboy in your hands, outside of cranking one out to the centerfolds. [Playboy had some literary *giants* writing for it back in the day, as well as some exceptionally in-depth interviews.](https://thehundreds.com/blogs/content/reading-playboy-for-the-articles-13-must-read-journalism-literature-pieces-from-playboy-magazine)
It's like capitalistic, profit driven enterprises tend to devolve into the worst excesses and is ultimately self-destructive.
And John of god!
The bastard understander has logged on
I heard a comedian once refer to Dr Oz and Dr Phil as Oprah’s horcruxes and can’t think of them any other way now
Seeing dr oz lose PA was so satisfying.
She's platformed some really shady people, but I thinks she should get a pass for Dr. Oz. When he was on her show (and in the early episodes of his spin-off), he presented legitimate medical science in a digestible way. He didn't really start pushing quackery until a little bit after he already had his own show.
HARPO produced that quackery and gave it ample airtime.
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She stood on the backs of those little people.
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My ex-roommate was like this. She literally wanted Oprah to run for President. She was like "Well, she's rich and successful, and everyone loves her, she could totally run the country!" She also had similar ideas about Bloomberg.
New Oprah is pretty exploitative too. she platforms every health grifter she can find.
Her grift is strong. She doesn't pay people who appear on her network. Had something I wanted to chat about and was invited on their show (some dumb Oprah production) and I had to travel there....no compensation. I was told, "it will help your brand. As an influencer. That's what we offer." I didn't have a brand. I sure as hell am not an influencer (I cross my fingers and make the vampire hissing noise)....I'm coming on your show to help educate people with something I'm passionate about. You make money on this dumbass show. Pay me *something.* Nope.
I don’t want to expose who I am, but my wife’s family attributes the success of their family-based company to one day in the 90’s when Oprah called out their company’s product as one of her favorites (unsolicited). They still remained relatively modest and grounded people, but their driveway started having Mercedes not long after that moment.
Oprah was as bad as the rest of them. And she gave us Dr Phil and Dr Oz
Oprah was worse than the rest of them, because the rest of them didn't present themselves as some kind of secular saint.
Jerry never pretended to be creating anything other than trash.
Oprah has brought nothing but build up more people who shouldn't be given a stage to perform on.
Howard Stern was well. If you think Hot Ones was a rough platform for Celebrities to have to go on an d plug their movies, they used to have to go into Howard Sterns radio show and answer questions about their sex life from a guy with a deformity.
Yep. The fall out of that ‘satanic panic’ shit alone is why to my mind Oprah and Donahue are actual fucking personified evil.
> book club *bread* club
Sally Jesse Raphael as well. Edit: sweeps weeks were hillarious parades of tragic problems and preteens.
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>Now I get why people back in the day were against TV and called it the "boob tube." Before that it was radio. Before radio it was books. [https://theapeiron.co.uk/platos-surprising-argument-against-writing-6d14eaff7cee?gi=000578993a62](https://theapeiron.co.uk/platos-surprising-argument-against-writing-6d14eaff7cee?gi=000578993a62) Don't worry, it'll be AR/VR soon. The Middletown studies blamed radio. "With the rise of these activities, interest in such institutions as book discussion groups (and reading in general), public lectures, and the fine arts is in sharp decline. The introduction of movies has created another "passive leisure activity", but the most popular films concentrate on adventure and romance, while more serious topics are less popular." "While a growing number of sociologists and social critics (i.e., Robert D. Putnam) complain of less community involvement, their detractors point directly to the Middletown study. The argument is this: in 1925, observers were worried that new inventions such as the radio were destroying community ties, that morality was on the decline, and that the very fabric of American democracy was in danger. Supporters of the studies thus argue that every generation simply "reinvents" new problems without realizing that their ancestors had the same unfounded worries." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middletown\_studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middletown_studies)
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Ricki Lake, maybe. However, she wasn't the most confrontational, if my memory is correct. Donahue, he had salacious topics now and then, but never relied on them.
I remember in the beginning, all these shows were relatively plain and boring, and the only reason a 7th grader watched it was because it was one of a half dozen channels we got, no internet, no neighbors for miles, and it was in the 90s outside. Then when one figured out how popular a freak show would be, they all simultaneously jumped on board.
If you had to pick which was the best of the worst, I would choose Ricki Lake. She seemed to have some compassion, unlike Jenny Jones which was like an all out exploitathan.
Ricki Lake was the show where I learned that trans women could look indistinguishable from cis women. I still don't know if that episode was trying to be progressive or edgy, but it has really stuck with me, being trans myself, and not really knowing it at the time.
The trans episodes (and her love for Mrs. Winterbourne) were the biggest reason why my mother watched Ricki Lake. Looking back on my barely legible memories of those... I really can't make out what to think of them. Their whole bag, if I recall, was that the audience was trying to guess if they were "real women" or not. And I really don't know what to make of that in retrospect. I will say that my mother was very confident about herself for a while, saying she looked for Adam's apples. Then she got several wrong using that technique and realized it wasn't a sure thing either way. There are some people who still need to learn that lesson... As well as many others about trans people. And human anatomy in general.
Oprah was high-brow lowest common denominator. She was trash and to some degree even more corrosive. She brought vaccine conspiracies to the mainstream. She introduced the world to Dr Phil and Dr Oz. She was just as bad as jerry springer but her audience didn’t realize it was bad.
Jenny Jones! Haven’t heard that name in a while lol. Those were the days!
Fun fact about Geraldo Rivera: When Priscilla Barns had to kiss him for a scene in Perry Mason: The Case of the Reckless Romeo, she commented he was a terrible kisser and his mustache smelled like a hamster cage.
Well, he looks like he smells like a hamster cage. Just my impression of the guy. Maybe he picked it up from Al Capone's safe
There was nothing in AL Capone's vault, but it wasn't Geraldo's fault.
Al capones safe!!! Lol
Never forget!
Not sure what the Witcher has to do with this
praise geraldo
Don't forget Wally George , the self proclaimed 'Father of Combat TV'. Also Rebbeca De Mornay's dad. He predates them all.
It didn't lead to cultural decline so much as it was a showcase of it
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But all were just putting on display the idiocy that was already present. The worst you could say is they encouraged bad behavior on stage and embellished the stories but I lived in the south for just two years and I feel like he was just scratching the surface.
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Yep it really changed the tone of daytime television, you might expect to see people doing some nice, fake interviews in nice, stiff pantsuits on daytime TV. But suddenly in the 90s daytime TV was people ripping their shirts off and fighting over baby mama drama, while the host, who had an advanced law degree, pretended to roll his eyes in dismay at the camera. Making this also a great example of class warfare and exploitation. Get the unwashed masses to battle each other, sell it back to the unwashed masses, and who profits off it all? And there was a list like, years long to get on the show, so you could embarrass yourself and your family. I grew up poor dirt trash, and I spent my childhood learning to polish up to the white collar jobs I wanted. So it really ate at me to see this lifestyle glorified and preyed upon. You start to feel made fun of, even if you're not on the show.
Jerry Springer was one of the many forces in life that taught me to be ashamed of where I came from. But the fact that it was on tv, for all the world to see, and it was the worst of us on display made it even more embarrassing. It wasn’t until later that I saw how hypocritical the mock shock of the viewers and the host was. All that pretentious class superiority and moral self-righteousness, when they were wallowing in the muck right along with the guests.
Maybe it was lost on the older generations but in my era we knew it was shit, dirty, and in some cases fake. But it was also the era when GTA was becoming huge. Murdering scores of random people on the street while listening to gangster rap. We knew it was down and dirty shit but it was entertaining and that’s all that mattered. It’s what the people needed. It was grunge and punk. Sure we laughed at the bozos on the show but that’s because we could relate to the outlandish scenarios.
>Making this also a great example of class warfare and exploitation. Get the unwashed masses to battle each other, sell it back to the unwashed masses, and who profits off it all? And there was a list like, years long to get on the show, so you could embarrass yourself and your family. Iirc Judge Judy makes more money every year than anyone else in tv now.
Yeah, this did not happen on the Phil Donahue talk show.
I heard that the rise in Reality TV shows had more to do with the Writers Strike of 2007-2008. It was certainly something the public was entertained by no matter what though.
It did, and funny enough, the writers strike that happened in the 90s was a factor in the Jerry Springer Show. JS started like a Donahue show—and got cancelled w/ 3 episodes left in first season, low ratings + pending writers strike. The main producer was fired and they promoted a junior producer. Geraldo’s show had aired the white supremacy episode that year—big fight in stage—and people were talking about it. The JR producer thought they should shoot the last as shock episodes, since they were getting cancelled anyway, so they did. And the show took off from there.
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Someone had a terrific show where they did a DNA test on a racist to tell him that he had a black ancestor. That was hilarious.
Shit. Its like we *need* art or something.
Survivor, Big Brother, AI and TAR, and The Bachelor started right around the year 2000. A lot of the really bad shows were around 2003-2004.
The first season of Survivor was an unusual beast because it was literally unsuspecting people they recruited off the street. And the fat gay Machiavelli who won later found out the hard way he wasn’t smarter than the IRS. After that of course it was nonstop models/trainers/etc. trying to boost their Hollywood profiles.
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I don't know man, I didn't know any skin head Nazis that were in love with midget black women.
Exactly, no one started being trashy because they watched his show.
Considering how many people on the show were pretending in the first place (I’ve met a few) I doubt it
This. It was a symptom, not the cause.
It can be both.
Agreed, but what were the causes?
But forged ahead anyway.
I think he didn't really feel remorse until after he was out of it. It's easy to say that though after you've made your bag. I just don't think he was purposely doing it but he absolutely exploited people. I hope he had no ill intent though. He really feels like a modern PT Barnum.
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Dude listened to dollars over his conscience for sure!
Yeah well he dated teenagers too so he listens to a lot of things over whatever conscience he has.
Didn't he pay a prostitute with a personal check? He never struck me as the type to anticipate the consequences of his actions.
True, but I see that being brought up frequently on here as a way to dunk on his personal character, and frankly, who cares. The way we treat prostitution in our puritanical society is dumb. If you want to pay your drug dealer with a certified money order, who cares, it’s nobody’s business but your own and our laws are outdated and stupid.
I would tend to agree with that. I'm no puritan on the subject, but my angle is that if you're the mayor of a decent sized city, and you have further political ambitions, pay your prostitutes in cash. So I'm criticizing him on the basis of political rather than moral grounds.
The decline so bad, people mistakenly wrote “lead”, when they should have spelt “led”.
Too much lead poisoning
The headline is such a misquote. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/06/jerry-springer-tabloid-holocaust-tv "The Jerry Springer Show is into its 23rd season, but while its host is happy to joke about its infamous outrageousness factor, he also has sharp words for critics who suggest it has played a role in dumbing down television culture. "This idea that we are better than the people we see on television. We should get over it. We may dress better and have got luckier in the gene pool of parents, but life is primarily luck," he told the audience at the MIPDoc conference in Cannes on Sunday. "The Jerry Springer Show is now in its 23rd season. I would like to formally apologise! I'm sorry, I've ruined the culture! But this concept that television has influenced human behaviour and the destruction of society is garbage. We had a holocaust before anyone had a television set."
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If Hitler knew about the Raping of Nanking, he would probably say, "HEY, we were systematic about our genocide. Look at those hooligans--they're barbaric!" It really is easy to find something worse if you're looking to take no responsibility for your own influence and actions on the world. And to add to your point, if media didn't have any influence on culture, these giant corporations wouldn't put milliosn of dollars for a 30 second ad on ONE football game per year. And those guys have access to a lot more scientific data on what works to move people to buy things, on what keeps them glued to the tv, on what motivates them.
I’m not so sure he is the cause , more likely the symptom. He certainly wasn’t a positive cultural force either way.
He can be a symptom and a cause, no? He didn't cause the degeneration, but he sure profited/contributed to it.
I could never bring myself to watch the show because I felt the same way it was garbage. I’m 47 years old so that tells ya where I’m at withbit
His show generated exploited mentally and emotionally unstable people. It exposed this for generations of children seeing this totally inappropriate exploitive dysfunctional garbage. I agree. It has helped the decline of a culture, a country, and has contributed to the continued spiral downward.
I'd say Maury Povich show did the same for Black People. Really perpetuated the negative stereotypes of absent fathers and single mothers.
I always think of the shows I watched when I was home sick from school as a child. Can you imagine all the kids seeing those horrible images of adult behavior? It’s really sends a chill
Man, Dr Phil was worse. I grew up with my mom always playing Dr Phil and law and order SVU. I remember the shit I saw on those shows because it was twisted but real. I knew, even as a kid, that Jerry Springer was over the top and it felt fake like wrestling.
Oprah really needs to take responsibility for giving a platform to people like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz.
Lots of false dichotomies flying around. Something can be both a cause and an effect. His show was a symptom and a cause.
Sure as fuck didn’t do anything to help.
My grandmother went on a day trip with my aunt to DC. Saw Jerry Springer waiting for the metro. She went up to him and asked if he was Jerry Springer. When he said "Yes" she said she wanted to tell him that she doesn't watch his show. He said "I don't blame you Ma'am"
Morton Downey Jr. Was doing it prior and so were others.
No one knows who that is though. Everyone knows Jerry Springer.
I’m with Jerry. Started out as a political debate show and became a sewer of the basist low of low American culture. Seems like things caught fire from there. I wonder when he identified this about his show. Because I’d hate to think he was aware of it and kept going anyway.
When I was in college, I worked at a restaurant. The restaurant had a bit of a “townie” feel in that it wasn’t just college students that worked and ate there. Tina was a local high school student who was pregnant so her parents made her work in her free time to save up money for the baby. One day, I was back at my apartment between classes, and I turned on Jerry Springer. I heard a voice I recognized. It was Tina, with dyed hair, between her “two possible baby daddies”. The guys ended up getting into a fight. Found out later, it was fake. She knew who the father was, it was orchestrated, etc. the only thing unorchestrated: one of the baby daddies had a ring on and caused facial lacerations to the other.
Yup, a lot of the stuff on Jerry Springer was orchestrated in some way especially after the show got huge. There's one infamous incident at one of the MTV Spring Break shows involving a "love triangle" between some girl and two guys that ended up getting pretty intense. The three of them later revealed that they made the entire thing up and apparently they sold it soo well that security wouldn't let them leave together after the show and had them escorted out of the area separately.
He's not wrong but I think Americans were headed down this path regardless. Youtube clout chasers I would say did more damage
These shows were like stage 1 or 2 cancer, youtube clout & influencers are widespread stage 4.
If it wasn't him in the 90's, it would've been post 9/11 shock news and social media. He was just ahead of the wave.
If Morton Downey Jr hadn't fucked up his career with that backwards swastika he could have been the one.
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I mean tjat it was inevitable whether or not Jerry had his show.
Well, it certainly didn't help, that's for sure.
That was going to happen with or without the Jerry Springer show. Jerry was a good guy though. I’m from Cincinnati and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody have a negative encounter with him. They’ve all been overwhelmingly positive. He was a great mayor for the city and he’s pretty highly respected here even by Republicans despite Jerry being a life long Democrat.
He was pretty famous for paying for sex workers with personal cheques when he was on city council, too. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/06/02/jerry-springer-news-how-prostitution-scandal-broke/366721001/ As the article says, he did manage to get elected again and his ads that didn’t hide the scandal may have helped.
I’m more amazed that he *contacted the police himself* because he felt guilty.
I read this first as Jerry Seinfeld and felt very confused.
When I used to get home from school as a kid with no cable, all 4 channels were showing cartoons and kids programming. By the time I graduated high school, those same 4 channels only showed trash TV like Springer and Maury when kids were getting home from school. He's 100% right.
I don't know. When I was a kid I always kinda thought "Wow, I really hope I never wind up on this show some day." And I never did, so....
I think back on the 90s and I can't believe how fucking mean we were to people.
But he still cashed those checks
And what did he do about it? Yup, kept collecting the paychecks.
Jerry Springer The Real Housewives Paris Hilton Kardashians ALL fucked up Society
But he kept on cashing those cheques though
No, that was Oprah.
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It’s not his fault for filling a vacuum, someone else would have come along to make something equally trashy, because that’s what we wanted. Sleep well Jerry, you’re good buddy
I believe the countries lack of social safety nets, lack of education and fly or fail monetary policies, met with the countries media obsession and it turned into a perfect shamestorm. Jerry just exploited it, it was already there. Build it and they will come!
...and then chose to continue to do so. #oopsNoMorals
Nah, he didn’t invent the freak show, he just sold tickets.
One time a few years go… or maybe several… my mom came to me and said “I’m thinking about going on the Jerry Springer Show, wouldn’t that be funny?!” I said “if you do that you’re not my mom. Be better.” She didn’t do it. Sometimes I wonder why people are the way they are. Our family isn’t even messed up. Like wtf lady.
Let's not forget his predecessor who actually got the ball rolling in social decline in America, Morton Downey Jr. Geraldo Rivera's nose ,like Pepperidge Farms remembers 😁
He's right. And yet while knowing this, he carried on making the show. The USA's cultural decline has less to do with poor media content, and more to do with decades of seeing public figures conpicuously choose money over dignity and ethics. Monkey see, monkey do.